History from 1945-Present Discussion week 1

Iron Curtain Speech, Winston Churchill, 1946, from Sage American History , is available under a Creative

Iron Curtain Speech, Winston Churchill, 1946

Winston Churchill was invited by President Harry S. Truman to visit his native Misourri during Churchill's

visit to the United States in 1946. When Churchill addressed a joint session of Congress, thanking them

for the invitation to speak, he remarked that he had had an English father and an American mother,

adding that, “If it had been the other way around, I should like to think I might have got here on my

own!” Later he made his famous Iron Curtain speech at Westminster College in Fullerton, Missouri.

I am glad to come to Westminster College this afternoon and am complimented that you shou ld give me

a degree. The name Westminster is somehow familiar to me. I seem to have heard of it before. Indeed it

was at Westminster that I received a very large part of my education in politics, dialectic, rhetoric and

one or two other things.

...

The Uni ted States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment for the

American democracy. With primacy in power is also joined an awe -inspiring accountability to the future.

As you look around you, you must feel not only the sense of duty done but also feel anxiety lest you fall

below the level of achievement. Opportunity is here now, clear and shining, for both our countries. To

reject it or ignore it or fritter it away will bring upon us all the long reproaches of the aftertime. It is

necessary that constancy of mind, persistency of purpose and the grand simplicity of decision shall guide

and rule the conduct of the English -speaking peoples in peace as they did in war. We must and I believe

we shall prove ourselves equal to this seve re requirement.

When American military men approach some serious situation they are wont to write at the head of

their directive the words, “over- all strategic concept.” There is wisdom in this as it leads to clarity of

thought. What, then, is the over -all strategic concept which we should inscribe today? It is nothing less

than the safety and welfare, the freedom and progress of all the homes and families of all the men and

women in all the lands. And here I speak particularly of the myriad cottage or apartment homes, where

the wage earner strives amid the accidents and difficulties of life, to guard his wife and children from

privation and bring the family up in the fear of the Lord or upon ethical conceptions which often play

their potent part.

To give security to these countless homes they must be shielded from the two gaunt marauders —war

and tyranny. We all know the frightful disturbance in which the ordinary family is plunged when the

curse of war swoops down upon the bread winner and those for whom he works and contrives. The

awful ruin of Europe, with all its vanished glories, and of large parts of Asia, glares in our eyes. When the

designs of wicked men or the aggressive urge of mighty states dissolve, over large areas, the frame of

civilized society, humble folk are confronted with difficulties with which they cannot cope. For them all

is distorted, broken or even ground to pulp.

...

0014 I now come to the second danger which threatens the cottage home and ordinary people, namely

tyranny. We cannot be blind to the fact that the liberties enjoyed by individual citizens throughout the

British Empire are not valid in a considerable number of countries, some of which are very powerful. In

these states, control is enforced upon the common people by various kinds of all- embracing police

governments, to a degree which is overwhelming and contrary to every principle of democracy. The

power of the state is exercised without restraint, either by dictators or by compact oligarchies operating

through a privileged party and a political police. It is not our duty at this time, when difficulties are so

numerous, to interfere forcibly in the internal affairs of countries whom we have not conquered in war,

but we must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of

man, which are the joint inheritance of the English -speaking world and which, through Magna Carta, the

Bill of Rights, the habeas corpus, trial by jury and the English common law, find their most famous

expression in the D eclaration of Independence.

...

I spoke earlier of the temple of peace. Workmen from all countries must build that temple. If two of the

workmen know each other particularly well and are old friends, if their families are intermingled and if

they have faith in each other’s purpose, hope in each other’s future and charity toward each other’s

shortcomings, to quote some good words I read here the other day, why cannot they work together at

the common task as friends and partners? Why cannot they share their t ools and thus increase each

other’s working powers? Indeed they must do so or else the temple may not be built, or, being built, it

may collapse, and we shall all be proved unteachable and have to go and try to learn again for a third

time, in a school of war, incomparably more rigorous than that from which we have just been released.

The Dark Ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of science, and what might

now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind may even bring abou t its total destruction.

Beware, I say; time may be short. Do not let us take the course of letting events drift along till it is too

late. If there is to be a fraternal association of the kind I have described, with all the extra strength and

security wit h both our countries can derive from it, let us make sure that that great fact is known to the

world, and that it plays its part in steadying and stabilizing the foundations of peace. Prevention is better

than cure.

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so l ately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet

Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are

the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies. I have a strong admiration and regard

for the valiant Russian people and for my war- time comrade, Marshal Stalin. There is sympathy and

good will in Britain— and I doubt not here also —toward the peoples of all the Russias and a resolve to

persevere through many differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting friendships. We understand the

Russians need to be secure on her western frontiers from all renewal of German aggression. We

welcome her to her rightful place among the leading nations of the world. Above all we welcome

const ant, frequent and growing contacts between the Russian people and our own people on both sides

of the Atlantic. It is my duty, however, to place before you certain facts about the present position in

Europe —I am sure I do not wish to, but it is my duty, I feel, to present them to you.

0015 From Stettin in the Baltic to Triest in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of central and eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin,

Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations

around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet

influence but to a very high and increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone, with its

immortal glories, is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French

observation. The Russian -dominated Polish government has been encouraged to make enormous and

wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and

undreamed of are now taking place. The Communist parties, which were very small in all these eastern

states of Europe, have been raised to pre -eminence and power far beyond their numbers and a re

seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every

case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy. Turkey and Persia are both

profoundly alarmed and disturbed at the claims which are made upon them and at the pressure being

exerted by the Moscow government. An attempt is being made by the Russians in Berlin to build up a

quasi -Communist party in their zone of occupied Germany by showing special favors to groups of Left -

Wing German leaders. At the end of the fighting last June, the American and British armies withdrew

westward, in accordance with an earlier agreement, to a depth at some points 150 miles on a front of

nearly 400 miles to allow the Russians to occupy this vast expanse of territory which the western

democracies had conquered. If now the Soviet government tries, by separate action, to build up a pro -

Communist Germany in their areas this will cause new serious difficulties in the British and American

zones, and will give t he defeated Germans the power of putting themselves up to auction between the

Soviets and western democracies. Whatever conclusions may be drawn from these facts —and facts they

are —this is certainly not the liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is it one which contains the

essentials of permanent peace.

The safety of the world, ladies and gentlemen, requires a new unity in Europe from which no nation

should be permanently outcast.

It is impossible not to comprehend —twice we have seen them drawn by irr esistible forces in time to

secure the victory but only after frightful slaughter and devastation have occurred. Twice the United

States has had to send millions of its young men to fight a war, but now war can find any nation

between dusk and dawn. Surely we should work within the structure of the United Nations and in

accordance with our charter. That is an open course of policy.

In front of the iron curtain which lies across Europe are other causes for anxiety. In Italy the Communist

party is seriously hampered by having to support the Communist trained Marshal Tito’s claims to former

Italian territory at the head of the Adriatic. Nevertheless the future of Italy hangs in the balance. Again

one cannot imagine a regenerated Europe without a strong France. All my public life I have worked for a

strong France and I never lost faith in her destiny, even in the darkest hours. I will not lose faith now.

However, in a great number of countries, far from the Russian frontiers and throughout the world,

Communist fifth columns are established and work in complete unity and absolute obedience to the

directions they receive from the Communist center. Except in the British Commonwealth and in this

United States, where Communism is in its infancy, the Communist parties or fifth columns constitute a

0016 growing challenge and peril to Christian civilization. These are somber facts for any one to have to recite

on the morrow of a victory gained by so much splendid comradeship in arms and in the cause of

freedom and democracy, and we should be most unwise not to face them squarely while time remains.

...

I have felt bound to portray the shadow which, alike in the West and in the East, falls upon the world. I

was a minister at the time of the Versailles treaty and a close friend of Mr. Lloyd George. I did not myself

agree with many things that were done, but I have a very vague impression in my mind of that situation,

and I find it painful to contrast it with that which prevails now. In those days there were high hopes and

unbounded confidence that the wars were over, and that the League of Nations would become all -

powerful. I do not see or feel the same confidence or even the same hopes in the haggard world at this

time.

On the other hand I repulse the idea that a new war is inevita ble; still more that it is imminent. It is

because I am so sure that our fortunes are in our own hands and that we hold the power to save the

future, that I feel the duty to speak out now that I have an occasion to do so. ...

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